Korean study 1 year retrospective. (Part Two)

So you study part time for a year, and what does it get you? In my case, I can read Korean at about 0.5x normal with about 80% accuracy and 10%-20% understanding depending on the context of the material.

I suppose this isn't really that great, but lets not forget that Korean, Chines, Japanese and Arabic are some of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers. I read an article once that a language like Spanish or German takes about 700 hours of study for an English speaker, whereas learning Japanese or Korean talks about 1400 hours of study. That's a long time! I reckon at my current rate I should be fluent in about 6 years!

In reality, I don't think studying another language ever really comes to an end, but reaching some sort of level may be more achievable than one thinks. One thing I have noticed is that learning is kind of like a snowball effect. In the beginning you pick up a piece here, another unrelated one there and try push them together into a ball which doesn't roll fast and doesn't attract much other snow. Over time, the links in your brain grow and your ability to remember arbitrary words grows and you kind of get an exponential growth.

Which reminds me of one of the learning errors I discovered. At first, when I saw a new word, I would try really really hard to remember it. I would write it down, I would put it in my MP3 player and dream about it at night. Sometimes I would remember the word, but the effort required in retaining it just wasn't worth it. So of late I have adopted a new strategy, 'chill'. When you see a word, don't stress, just read it, look it up in the dictionary and move on. If you forget the word, it doesn't matter. However, when you are reading some more a few paragraphs down and the same word pops up, you will either remember the word right there or you will look it up again once or twice more and it will stick.

So what is more important - Grammar or Vocabulary? From linguistic articles I have read on the internet I hear that vocabulary is most important and should be the focus of your study. Once you have a good vocabulary, the grammar will sort itself out. That was kind of revolutionary to my study. I can give you words in any order and you will still be able to understand what is said. EG: I want to go to see a movie. Want go see I a movie. to to see want a movie. Mmm, no matter how I juggle the words the meaning can be deciphered by a native speaker pretty easily.

However, in Korean you need to have a basic clue as to some grammar before you can even figure out what some words means. Words change shape when you put them at an end of a sentence, and sometimes loose or gain characters at the same time. Typing in a word with a tense modifier in a Korean electronic dictionary yields sweet nothing, you have to know or guess at what the original word may have been before it was munted into a sentence.

In learning Korean, I recommend an 90% 10% split between vocab, which is reading and grammar study - reading your textbook.

A lot more can be said about this, but after one year, I feel satisfied with what I have come through. Although at the beginning I prayed God would suddenly zap me in the head with Korean, kinda like in The Matrix, but I think learning it the conventional makes for a rich experience which is well worth it.